Next Gen - Death of the M-Rated Game?

February 27th, 2008, 03:09

We previously coverered some NPD data that suggested M-rated games were declining and it generated some discussion, so I thought it worth taking a look at this followup article at Next-Gen that tries to dig into the numbers a little. Author Matt Matthews tries to correlate the NPD data against Gamerankings (a methodology he acknowledges is imperfect) and finds an even sharper decline:

Now, where did all the M-rated games go? They're down in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the market. In my count they're dropped from 148 releases in 2005 to 79 releases in 2007, a more dramatic drop than the one shown in the ESRB's numbers for ratings assigned.